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Rod Smith
Every time I publish a book I go to Bridge Street Books,
in Washington, to do a reading at one of the most amiable and
intimate spaces around. And I hang out with Rod, who has made
the place a poetry hub. We usually go to a few museums – on
this trip we went to the Societé Anonyme
at the Phillips and then over to the Smithsonian. Fruitcakes?(mp4, 29 seconds, 4.7 mb)

Nicole Brossard
Nicole came by and we mostly discussed prose poetry, for a class
she was going to teach. But then I asked her about the different
pronunciations of French in the Americas. (mp4, 59 seconds, 11.4 mb)

Douglas Messerli
Douglas grew up in Iowa, where New York was as close as his
Broadway musical LPs, which he collected even though he didn’t
have a record player. Sun & Moon, and now Green Integer,
sales reps meetings bring him to town a couple of times a year.
Very often he stays at my mother’s apartment. Those trips
always give us a chance to spend an evening together, where we
talk of publishing, poetry, theater, but mostly the foibles of
our legion of mutual friends, and our own foibles too. We end
up laughing, even at the saddest things.(mp4, 1 min., 16 sec., 5.1 mb)

Peter Middleton
Peter was on his way back from Creeley Buffalo conference, which
I had missed because of the devastating snow storm in Buffalo
that weekend. The first time I met with Peter in New York was
in the early 1990s. I remember going to the Riverside Park
playground and while Emma played in the sandbox we chatted on
about his entirely informative book The Inward Gaze: Masculinity & Subjectivity
in Modern Culture.(mp4, 38 seconds, 7.5 mb)

Norman Fischer
Norman sat out on the bench in front of Pecan on Franklin,
just before walking west to the Clocktower to tape Close Listening.
We met up with Alan Davies, whose Close Listening shows I was
taping right before Norman’s. After the recording session
we wandered over to Excellent Dumpling for lunch, where we sat
next to Lynne Stewart. I’d just seen Paul Chan’s
film about Stewart, in which she talks about poetry and reads
from Blake. We were eating in the shadows of the criminal court
building in which she had been unjustly sentenced to jail. I
was glad to meet her and express my appreciation for her work
and concern for the price she might have to pay for defending
freedom. Meanwhile, our small band of poets – Alan, Norman,
and me – made our way over to the Chelsea to see Norman’s son Noah’s
new show. (mp4, 28 seconds, 5.7 mb)

Tina Darragh
We were in a bar somewhere in Baltimore after my i.e. reading
with Rod. The bar was noisy and dark but I found a small red
alcove to ask Tina about her red housing. (mp4, 51 seconds, 10 mb)